Laura’s Lessons in Katherine Mansfield’s “The Garden Party”
Sebnem Kaya

Abstract
In her short story “The Garden Party,” Katherine Mansfield concentrates on the conventional but false education given to an upper-class girl child named Laura in order to explore, or rather refute, the Victorian socio-moral values which restrained women by means of influencing their way of looking at life. The education in question that by design avoids initiating Laura to the realities of life, such as poverty and death presented as experiences lived by people outside Laura’s privileged social class, leaves her unprepared to face these facts, rendering her confused and inconsistent.

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